Saturday morning and Starbucks is abuzz.

Yesterday afternoon we attended an open house to celebrate the graduation of my wife’s brother’s son’s daughter from high school.  The graduate was radiant as she greeted well wishers just inside the foyer of the great room.  We were not sure who would be present at the event.  After entering the room I caught sight of Laura’s (my wife) brother coming across the room.  He and his wife had flown from South Carolina to Michigan for the celebration.  Over the following two hours we enjoyed “catching up” with individuals we’d not seen in years, especially given the onset of Covid.  (Are we not each a different person now?)

In the room round us swirled the play of many children, some great grandchildren — filling the space with serendipitous hubbub.  Is there any more paradisaical music than the sound of children at play?

At Starbucks this Saturday morning the mind turned to a backward look, casting a net for the meaning inscribed in the path that life has taken me.  Brandy by Looking Glass was playing.

Life is a kind of destiny is it not?  Freedom, that sensation of control, is nothing other than taking the option that circumstances present, the one which promises well-being, a future which only is imagined, but can never be known…  This freedom we call choice.  Certainly we consider those closest to us, especially a spouse to be an expression of our freedom of choice.  We take “the shot,” we commit to the one thing, one thing among several things that we love.  The choice, the doubling-down creates a branch-in-the-road, — the direction of the journey shifts.

And the upshot, the result, the effect(s) of that relationship continues without end.  Not unlike the ripple, a surface energy wave expanding outward from a pebble tossed into the still water of a pond…

All of us, drawn to the great room to celebrate Morgan’s graduation, are intersecting energy waves, dancing upon the surface of life.

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This 1972 tune by Looking Glass is a ballad about choice, about how life is shaped by choice, and about how choice is shaped by the constraints of what captures our “hearts.”  Two ways of speaking, the flip sides of the same coin, figures of speech expressing what we want to say by “destiny.”  Naturally, this is a sad song.

Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl)

By Looking Glass

(Dooda-dit-dooda), (dit-dooda-dit-dooda)

There’s a port on a western bay
And it serves a hundred ships a day
Lonely sailors pass the time away
And talk about their homes

And there’s a girl in this harbor town
And she works layin’ whiskey down
They say “Brandy, fetch another round”
She serves them whiskey and wine

The sailors say “Brandy, you’re a fine girl” (you’re a fine girl)
“What a good wife you would be” (such a fine girl)
“Yeah your eyes could steal a sailor from the sea”
(Dooda-dit-dooda), (dit-dooda-dit-dooda-dit)

Brandy wears a braided chain
Made of finest silver from the North of Spain
A locket that bears the name
Of a man that Brandy loved

He came on a summer’s day
Bringin’ gifts from far away
But he made it clear he couldn’t stay
No harbor was his home

The sailor said “Brandy, you’re a fine girl” (you’re a fine girl)

“What a good wife you would be” (such a fine girl)
“But my life, my love and my lady is the sea”
(Dooda-dit-dooda), (dit-dooda-dit-dooda-dit)

Yeah, Brandy used to watch his eyes
When he told his sailor’s story
She could feel the ocean fall and rise
She saw its ragin’ glory
But he had always told the truth, Lord, he was an honest man
And Brandy does her best to understand
(Dooda-dit-dooda), (dit-dooda-dit-dooda-dit)

At night when the bars close down
Brandy walks through a silent town
And loves a man who’s not around
She still can hear him say

She hears him say “Brandy, you’re a fine girl” (you’re a fine girl)
“What a good wife you would be” (such a fine girl)
“But my life, my love and my lady is the sea”
(Dooda-dit-dooda), (dit-dooda-dit-dooda-dit)

“Brandy, you’re a fine girl” (you’re a fine girl)
“What a good wife you would be” (such a fine girl)
“But my life, my love and my lady is the sea”

Lyrics by Elliot Lurie